Please Click on the Following Link - Center for Collaborative Education
Make no Mistakes about the Small Autonomous School Issues. This Issue is totally driven by Boston Consultants, Dan French and Eric Oddleison (who recently passed away). This attached consultant Firm, are and were the Consultants, solicted and supported by Elected School Committee Woman, Marlene Pollock, and newly Elected School Committeeman Jack Liveramento and the UIA, for promotion and implimentaion.
The questions still remains, "HOW and WHO", will pay for Dan French's Ideas and self promotion?
If the School Committee vote in the Affirmative, French will surley get "PAID". He does not work for free.
Dan French knows that any presentations by him personally to the Elected School Committee, Mayor and Teachers Union, would be unaccpetable. Therefore he needs a local Community organization like the UIA to advocate this idea, as he does not have the courage to do so himself.
So Dan French is definately using the UIA to do the leg work, and should the School Committee take a favorable vote on this seriously flawed idea, his firm would be the "PAID" established Consultant, for setting up small Autonmous Schools in New Bedford, along with New Be dford's Consultant Carol Matsumoto.
At any School Committee, Please, question Elected School Committee Women Marlene Pollock and Jack Liveramento, if Dan French is the outside Consultant involved in New Bedford's advocacy for Small Autonomous Schools, and see if either of them will be truthful.
9 comments:
Thank you Eddie Johnson for supporting teachers.
These autonomous schools spout smaller class sizes. How wonderful for those teachers and students who would benefit, but what of the others? The rest of the population would have an increase in class size and workload than their counterparts. Under the new evaluation guidelines, who do you think would benefit? How is that fair and equitable? The balance may lie in the fact that under the autonomous schools’ plan, those teachers would essentially be employees at will. The current contract would not be able to help ensure their position, working conditions and work day. Hours per day, days per year and rate at which they are paid would be dictated by the governing body of the school- which by the way does not have to be anyone remotely affiliated with education.
The City of New Bedford is crying poverty, asking for furloughs and no wage increases with local unions, but expecting the workers to do more with less. Cost of living still continues to rise. Benefits employees once received are being decimated. Yet, the UIA continues to push for these autonomous schools that they say are cost neutral, though Superintendent of New Bedford Public Schools Mary Louise Francis counters saying they are not.
The City of New Bedford is crying poverty, asking for furloughs and no wage increases with local unions, but expecting the workers to do more with less. Cost of living still continues to rise. Benefits employees once received are being decimated. Yet, the UIA continues to push for these autonomous schools that they say are cost neutral, though Superintendent of New Bedford Public Schools Mary Louise Francis counters saying they are not.
Innovation schools are a wolves in sheeps clothing.
Teachers need to recognize that autonomous also means that their rights, once protected by a mutually agreed upon contract, would basically be null and void. The principal and governing body of the autonomous school can dictate your working conditions, and change said conditions at their pleasure. If you are deemed an unsuitable fit to their ideals, you would find yourself out of a job, and nothing to show for however many years of service you had given to the students of New Bedford.
A personality conflict or nepotism could result in a completely competent teacher losing his/her position.
Class sizes in some schools are the largest they have ever been. Supplies are lean, if not scarce. Transitory populations continue to navigate in and out of our school system regularly. Attendance is still a major issue. Smaller autonomous schools are not going to solve these problems- they may even further hinder our ability to succeed.
The issue of attendance will be an area of contention in the public schools, but the autonomous schools will be able to circumvent this through counseling out those students who have attendance issues.
Post a Comment